Weekend Read: When It Comes to Marketing, Avoid Empty Calories

Jun 12, 2015 2:47 pm ET

Phin Barnes, partner at First Round Capital: When you run a startup, you’re running an experiment, and you need to be extremely efficient. The best experiments achieve this efficiency by eliminating variables. Most early stage companies do not have deep expertise in paid user acquisition, and, when they start to shell out for it, the learning curve is very steep and the initial spend yields limited results. The challenge of learning as you go is multiplied at the seed stage because the explanation for high customer acquisition costs might lie with the product, your audience or the marketing plan. All that said, like any good question, the answer to “Should startups spend money on marketing?” is truly “It depends.” For some companies that clearly depend on paid marketing for success, it behooves founders to focus on their marketing metrics earlier in the life of the company. …